Download the Official Dungeon Lords Demo from GameSpot DLX March 25, 2005 at 12pm PST!

Play as a Male Human, Urgoth or Wylvan as you venture through the dark and inhabited wilderness surrounding Fargrove. Your adventure continues through the intricate underground sewer system leading you to your first battle inside the Fargrove Theatre with the Goblin Mage. This demo features both Single Player and Multiplayer functionality.

To survive this large and lengthy demo and defend yourself from numerous enemies that you will encounter, you’ll be equipped with a wide array of weaponry including: swords, daggers, a bow and much more. In addition, you’ll be able to utilize a number of magic spells from summoning the undead, locust and rats to fire bursts and ice shards. Collect experience points as you progress and modify your character as you see fit.

I don't see how its craptacular. It is rough. but I don't recall D.W. Bradley making an easy game either. I'm starting to get the feel for combat but it's still taking time, with the first encounter being the roughest one. Jury is still out on this one. I will say that it looks nice.

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Tom "Dreamshadow" Tjarks Aunt Wu: Care to hear your fortune, handsome? Iroh: At my age there is really only one big surprise left, and I'd just as soon leave it a mystery.

I was able to get into the sewers under the town. The key is to hit E when you at about quarter damage and drink a heal potion. It does not take long before you end up with lots of them.

I however have no idea how to open a chest.

Overall it is interesting if somewhat tedious. I hope there is a secret to using all the combat combos. I get by now by mainly just clicking a lot. But there are lots of groups of goblins which are not difficult once you level up some skills but are time consuming. I am guessing once I get a good weapon they should go down much faster.

I would guess that is the shift key (not exactly intuitive) There is a many (many!) page list of key commands at the very beginning. If you don't look verrrrrryyyy closely you may not realize that there is more than one page. You have to click the right mouse button to advance to further pages (again: soooo not intuitive...) After about 4 pages of this, there were so many odd commands, my brain was on overload.

Yes, this badly needs a tutorial, and, I dare say, a more sensible interface.

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"All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing."

I made it about 15 steps before I was gang-raped by a pack of 3 wolves.

I should really figure out how to play a demo before I pass judgement but OUCH!

Ditto!

The guy spends years making a game and has you get massacred by a massive group of creatures in the first 30 seconds of the demo. Talk about bad first impressions... :x

**shakes head in bewilderment at the utter stupidity of some game developers**

If you didn't want me to buy your game, all you had to do was say it... :x

I thought the same thing, was ready to uninstall but kept at it though. The first thing you need to do, is come to the conclusion that it's not Diablo. It's not your typical hackNslash. It's about timing, and blocking strikes and then attacking when an opening arises (just like boxing)

To open a chest there are many ways. You can bash it, but the lock could jam on you, like it did for me one time, or you can try to disarm it.

The way to disarm it is a bit difficult at first cuz you have no way of knowing what to do at first, but once you realize what needs to be done it's much easier.

When you access the chest, you should realize that there is an icon on the bottom left, some times 2 or more depending on the difficulty of opening the chest. The key thing to do is memorize that icon, then click on disarm. You'll then see a series of icons in the middle of the interface. A progress bar will move accross the series of icons. Once that particular icon is highlighted, press the highlighted icon and it will open up without exploding.

Now, you might notice you have keys. Keys slow down the speed of the progress bar, depending on the quality of the key. So before disarming, you want to press the inventory button and go to the key tab. Select a key (you dont' want to use a good key on a easy chest) and then you should notice that your "odds" became easier. Then hit disarm and repeat what I said above. You should notice the bar move across slower

I hope that make sense. I had to practice a few times.

Whatever you, don't bash the locks in the sewers. I ended up jamming it, and now I'm stuck.

I was able to get into the sewers under the town. The key is to hit E when you at about quarter damage and drink a heal potion. It does not take long before you end up with lots of them.

I however have no idea how to open a chest.

Overall it is interesting if somewhat tedious. I hope there is a secret to using all the combat combos. I get by now by mainly just clicking a lot. But there are lots of groups of goblins which are not difficult once you level up some skills but are time consuming. I am guessing once I get a good weapon they should go down much faster.

You can assign spells/potions to your spell book. That way you don't have to press E and click on the potion tab and then select the potion.

To do this, Press E, then go to the potion tab, move your mouse over to the potion you want to add to your spell book (but don't click on it) while hovered, press a any number 1-0 on your keyboard and from now on when ever you press the assigned key, it will automatically drink that potion or cast that spell.

Thanks for the info, Naednek! I am pretty sure I never would have figured out that chest thing. The hotkeys will also be very useful. I think I'll give it a try. I have probably passed up over 20 chests.

Rumor has it this demo may be from the November build of the game. Apparently the current beta has music, automaps, better tutorials and tooltips, etc--all things missing in the demo.

Still, I don't have high hopes for this game.

Garret from RPGDot say's otherwise. In a preview he said that it was incredibly unpolished. The preview was from last month. Now he says;

compared to the preview version i played in january, i'm afraid not much has happened that falls into the eye of the player: -still no automap -still no music -still limited sound effects -game still needs balancing if i take the demo ofr preview version -voices are added, but the voice of the messenger is ridiculous for example -still no automap -on two-screen systems the mouse moves out of the game into the 2nd desktop and if clikced here causes a task switch, which crashes teh game, same as in my preview version

what has been added: -option screen -title music -new menus

of course, many things may have happened under the hood...still, i hope dreamcatcher gives heuristic park enough time to polish the game_________________'

Well now that I know my way around I am enjoying this. Once I raised my stats (dex is good) then the goblins stopped being annoying and became little exp banks. The only downside I am experiencing is my over-confidence. I start feeling like a god and then hit an area that amps up the damage and down I go with a save way back when.

Well now that I know my way around I am enjoying this. Once I raised my stats (dex is good) then the goblins stopped being annoying and became little exp banks. The only downside I am experiencing is my over-confidence. I start feeling like a god and then hit an area that amps up the damage and down I go with a save way back when.

Remember that in the demo, hitting the R key will revive you on the spot.

Yes, I very highly doubt that you'll be able to do this in the final, but it's there for the demo. It's buried somewhere near the end of the 'tutorial' instructions that everybody seems to just skip over as it's confusing and boring to read through it all.

And I personally spent a lot of time wandering around in the forest before going into the keep. If you search around, you'll stumble upon a chain vest (only useful once you get some strength and medium armor skill) and another weapon or two you won't find elsewhere. And you'll get lots of experience from all the spawning mobs.

When I finally decided to go indoors, the only groups that could take me down (before I had to quaff a health potion or three) were the packs of a dozen wolves. Then again, without fireball or the like, that would kill anybody at that point in the game.

By the time the demo finally ended, I seriously felt overpowered. I went unarmed (which is actually viable in this game), and chose no spell skills (and never casted a spell short of the rare fireball just to survive), so all the points I would've spent in weapons/magic went towards powering up my stats, my punches, and my armor skills.

Short of the boss fight (which once again would've killed anybody), the normal mobs weren't a threat at all. And with my stock of 100+ healing potions, nobody could kill me if they tried.

I hope this isn't this way in the final game. But I'll be waiting for reviews before picking up this title because of the poor demo.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

Remember that in the demo, hitting the R key will revive you on the spot.

Yes, I very highly doubt that you'll be able to do this in the final, but it's there for the demo. It's buried somewhere near the end of the 'tutorial' instructions that everybody seems to just skip over as it's confusing and boring to read through it all.

You got me there. I do remember skipping past a few pages of key bindings.

I also hit the end of the demo and either the exp rewards were cranked up a bit or this is just one of those games that allows you to feel like a badass in areas weak for your character but then smacks you hard when you enter a tougher one.

I may play around with it again and wander the outdoors. I did very little of that.

generally, time spent making the demo is time not spent making the game. And in the crunch time before release, time is a valuable commodity.

I cant say I would be happy with buggy demos, but I pretty much dont install them anymore because I understand that they are buggy almost by necessity.

My worry from what I see here is that the sort of bugs people are reporting (lack of an uninstaller, resolution problems, sticky keys problems, can't lose focus and continue working) seem to indicate a lack of understanding of the windows platform and a lack of even cursory QA. How do you not know that your demo can't be uninstalled? Did you even try to use it before you shipped it?

I haven't installed the demo, but they either rolled their own installer or used an off-the-shelf toolkit. If they built their own tools and didn't include an uninstall feature than that doesn't speak real strongly to either their judgement or their abilities. If they used InstallShield/Wise/MSI/whatever and screwed it up badly enough that there's no uninstall, that's even worse - that's a feature that's there by default and doesn't require any work to implement.

can anyone explain the magic system? at first glance it looks like you can only use each spell X amount of times, but then how would a pure magic user get through the game if he couldn't cast any spells after one or two fights?

the idea of slowing time and stuff like that strikes my interest, but after using all of my spells, i just messed around with a warrior.